We’ve updated the Notices section of Settings to better reflect how folks are using Twitter regarding replies. Based on usage patterns and feedback, we’ve learned most people want to see when someone they follow replies to another person they follow—it’s a good way to stay in the loop. However, receiving one-sided fragments via replies sent to folks you don’t follow in your timeline is undesirable. Today’s update removes this undesirable and confusing option.

So effective immediately is you will no longer see your friends @ replies to folks you don’t follow.

Holy FAIL WHALE! This is absolutely the primary way I find new people to follow. Discovery on Twitter is part of the Magic.

Let’s review DM biz (nobody but Biz sees) // @ replies @biz (everybody sees) // so what about RT‘s let’s see, perhaps a minor update removing the RT feature all together. Or perhaps RT will only show up if you follow both the Tweeter and the Original Tweeter. UG!

Here is what they have to say about that in the same post:

The Importance of Discovery

“Spotting new folks in tweets is an interesting way to check out new profiles and find new people to follow. Despite this update, you’ll still see mentions or references linking to people you don’t follow. For example, you’ll continue to see, “Ev meeting with @biz about work stuff” even if you don’t follow @biz. We’ll be introducing better ways to discover and follow interesting accounts as we release more features in this space.” Or maybe delete features that were working fine without really thinking of the impact of something that seems so “SMALL!”

Oh, okay, trust the company that can’t keep their servers up to release more features that will fill this void they are creating. Oh, let me guess, the “paid Twitter account” can control all kinds of cool functions. Like seeing all of the @ replies!

So folks, here is a tipping point. Twitter has removed a feature, “Based on usage patterns and feedback” that was far and away the most useful discovery process I had. Follow someone interesting and see who they are tweeting with. It’s easy enough to click on the @-ed person’s profile to see what the rest of the conversation is about. But now you CAN’T.

We’re getting a ton of extremely useful feedback about yesterday’s update to Settings. The engineering team reminded me that there were serious technical reasons why that setting had to go or be entirely rebuilt—it wouldn’t have lasted long even if we thought it was the best thing ever. Nevertheless, it’s amazing to wake up and see all the tweets about this change.

We’re hearing your feedback and reading through it all. One of the strongest signals is that folks were using this setting to discover and follow new and interesting accounts—this is something we absolutely want to support. Our product, design, user experience, and technical teams [the teams that deleted this feature in the first place] have started brainstorming a way to surface a new, scalable way to address this need. [Oh boy, stay tuned. Do they really have a UX and Design team? What are they desiging, the update for the Fail Whale? Those cute little “somethings wrong” graphics?]